Frequently kiss in your heart the crosses which our Lord Himself has placed in your arms. Heed not whether they are of perfumed or precious wood: they are more truly crosses when they are of coarse, heavy, ordinary wood.
65.
This sweet love of our hearts casts us down only to raise us up. He lurks and hides, peeping through the lattice, to see the expression of our countenance.
66.
Keep Jesus closely in your arms, for it is thus the Spouse holds Him as a bouquet of myrrh, that is of bitterness: but He is not bitter; He only allows us to be bitter to ourselves.
67.
Being a good servant of God is not always having consolation and sweetness, nor being always free from aversion and repugnance to good.
68.
To be a good servant of God is to be charitable to our neighbour, maintaining in the superior will an invincible resolution to do God’s will: to possess great humility and simplicity in confiding one’s self to God; to rise as frequently as one falls; to inure one’s self to humiliations, and to tranquilly bear with others and their defects.